PCI board, card, drive hop onto IEEE 1394 bandwagon

CORVALLIS, ORE. — Evergreen Technologies Inc. has jumped onto the IEEE 1394 Firewire bandwagon with its Fireline family of interface cards and peripherals. The family initially includes a $99 PCI board, a $149 CardBus card and a $499 portable hard drive, with more items to be phased in throughout the year.

"Most existing PCs shipped before 1999 don't have the high-speed IEEE 1394 interface and, until the user installs one, can't communicate with the growing number of computer peripherals and digital electronics devices equipped with the IEEE 1394 high-speed interface," said Mike Magee, president and chief executive officer. "A short list of such devices," he said, "includes DV camcorders, CD burners, scanners, external hard drives, DVD players, set-top boxes, etc."

Mark Kirstein, vice president of Cahners In-Stat Group, said that by "breaking the $100 barrier with their PCI host-adapter card," Evergreen has hit "a magic consumer price point."

"IEEE 1394 is positioned as the primary digital consumer electronics interface," Kirstein said. "By 2003, In-Stat's market research anticipates that overall adoption of IEEE 1394 will reach high-volume shipments of nearly 200 million units across all market segments," he said.

The Evergreen board and card support hot swap and plug-and-play, and they come with a digital 1394 cable, video adapter cable, Windows 98 drivers and video editing software. The PCI board has three external 1394 connectors and one internal 1394 connector. The CardBus card, which is a Type III device, has two external 1394 connectors.

The drive measures 13 x 3 x 8 inches, and weighs 6 pounds. It has a 20-Gbyte capacity and comes with an external dc +12-V input power jack for daisy chaining additional devices. .

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EET Info No. 607